The Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Pat has released a video of a prototype robot dragonfly drone.
As Wired’s Spencer Ackerman notes, the mechanical dragonfly is currently little more than a circuit board, a super-tiny motor and two insect-like wings.
However, the Pentagon clearly has high hopes for the nascent drone and eventually plans to fit a uber-tiny camera on the mini-dragonfly.
It should be noted that the concept of miniaturization is now a major trend in drone tech.
To be sure, the Army has developed a new Switchblade drone that is essentially a semi-autonomous missile shot out of a mortar tube for kamikaze missions.
The Navy is also heavily investing in drone research, as it recently began studying the behavioral and migratory patterns of birds, fish and bats to develop more realistic ‘bots.
